Open Educational Resources (OER) are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.

Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge” (Hewitt Foundation).

Open educational resources provide users with free and perpetual permission to: Retain – Reuse – Revise – Remix – Redistribute.

Finding materials and modifying them for your individual classroom context, rather than reinventing the wheel, is an efficient use of your valuable time and also allows you to build upon the collective knowledge that is ‘out there’! You can find resources across many subject areas and teaching contexts through OER Repositories, through Pinterest, Twitter and other social media sites. It is important to understand licensing when using, remixing and sharing OER. In addition, sharing your own (unique or modified) resources in an OER repository is a highly professional, collaborative and valued endeavour!

OER might include: free open textbooks, lesson plans, quizzes, video tutorials, PowerPoint presentations, etc., to use in your classes! Consider adding to the collective knowledge base by contributing your own OER!

Visit the Scarfe Digital Sandbox resource post on OER to get started and learn more!